I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!
4.5 STARS!!!
WAS PULLED IN FROM THE START AND COULD'NT PUT IT DOWN.
HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU READ THIS BOOK, IF YOU LIKE SUSPENSEFUL THRILLERS.
CANT WAIT TO READ MORE FROM TOM BALE.

This didn't quite deliver for me but can I see how some will love it

I received a free eARC of this book via NetGalley but that has in no way influenced my review.

I read and reviewed Tom Bale’s See How They Run shortly after starting my blog over three years ago and rather enjoyed it. All Fall Down had a lot to live up to and I am delighted to confirm that it didn’t disappoint at all. In fact, it surpassed my expectations with jaw-dropping scene after jaw-dropping scene as the story reached its climax. I love Bale’s books in that respect. His characters are so beautifully, brilliantly normal but they somehow end up in the most terrifying, heart-stopping scenarios.

Rob and Wendy Turner and two of their three teenage children are spending a sunny Summer afternoon in the garden enjoying a Barbecue. Pretty normal, right? Until someone starts banging on their fence, pleading to be let in. Their gut reaction is to help so they fling the gate open only for a badly beaten man to stagger into their garden. They try their best to save him with their basic first aid skills but he dies. What they believe was a chance encounter turns out to be anything but. What secrets are the family hiding? And could they be deadly…?

I thoroughly enjoyed All Fall Down. The plot is gripping and moves at a good pace to keep the reader turning the pages. The characters are superb and you feel as though you’re living the nightmare with the Turner family. The story took off in directions I never expected and for that, I loved this book. There were so many highlights. There were also a number of uncomfortable moments which made my skin crawl, all brilliantly written.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, I would. If you like to read about extraordinary things happening to normal people then you will love All Fall Down. The only quibble I had was that the end felt a little drawn out. I would have liked everything tied up a little quicker but that’s just me. All in all, a compelling page-turner of a family thriller which kept me spellbound from start to finish.

I chose to read and review an eARC of All Fall Down. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

I liked the author's style and some of the characterisation, it kept me quite engaged initially - but this storyline just didn't work for me and I gradually lost interest. I'll try another of his books and hope that the story sits better.

This book starts out suspenseful and exciting and doesn’t let up.

It begins with Rob and Wendy having a barbeque in their backyard with their son, Evan, and his girlfriend and their adopted daughter Georgia. Their other son, Josh, Evan’s twin, is away at school. They hear a knocking at their fence and Rob hears someone pleading the words “help me.” The old man that Rob finds has been beaten terribly and it looks like he may have been tortured. They call the paramedics, but the man dies en route to the hospital, so now the police must determine if they are investigating a murder.

Rob has his own secrets—he knows people who occasionally don’t operate within the law. Georgia is fighting her own demons from her mother’s ex-boyfriend who murdered her addicted mother and almost murdered her. Josh also has secrets. Because the family themselves has things they want to hide, they are hesitant about how much to reveal to the police. This makes the book much more interesting because Bale drops bits about their past as he goes.

They don’t know if they were targeted for a reason or if they are just victims of a circumstance. Several odd things happen over the course of the week, and several members of the family feel like they may be being watched. But why?

This is fast-paced and gripping. I recommend it to fans of mystery/suspense/thrillers.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bookoutre for giving me the opportunity to review this book.

For more of my reviews, please visit: http://theresaalan.net/blog

All Fall Down by Tom Bale is a thrilling read you will struggle to put down, similar to his last offering, See How They Run. This novel will leave you with an eerie feeling and you wont be able to not think what you would do in a similar situation. 4 stars and highly recommend

Rob and Wendy let a dying man into their house after he knocks on their door. Then they get an anonymous letter, making then look deeper at everything.
They're being watched but don't know who by or why.
It’s the perfect Sunday. Summer sunshine, a barbecue with the kids.
But a knock on the garden gate and two words, ‘HELP ME’, changes everything, then the first anonymous letter arrives.
Someone is watching.
Someone is waiting.
Everyone has secrets, but how can you save your family, if you don’t really know them?
Brilliant thriller.

This was the first book I read on my Kindle and it is the one that made me want to read more and more. I was hooked from the start. It's written superbly and it had a gripping storyline.

I am a huge fan of Tom’s, I’m not going to lie! I unapologetically fangirl on Twitter because I really enjoy his work so I was more than a little excited to read All Fall Down a MONTH before its release! Having read and LOVED See How They Run earlier this year I was thrilled to get this one!

All Fall Down is twisted and brilliant in equal measure. To be fair, I wasn’t sure what I was expecting when I started it but that opener certainly sealed the deal in that I was hooked immediately and cursing the fact that I had to leave my kindle down to do real life stuff! I mean come on, do I have to make dinner? I’m at a really good part!!!! (Nobody went hungry, don’t worry!)

Tom Bale has a way with words. His writing is enough to give me the heebie jeebies about everyday, mundane things. Like locking your door at night (SHTR freaked me out for a while after that!) and now I have to contend with making sure our gate is locked too!!!! I don’t like being freaked out Tom!!! *evil eyes*

Scolding aside (he knows I love him really) All Fall Down is a super grippy, page turning rollercoaster of a book! I couldn’t fault the pace, I’m surprised my Kindle is in one piece with the speed I was page tapping towards the end if I’m honest!

I’m an absolute sucker for action in a book. And All Fall Down has it in spades. The characters are excellent too! A mature family is a departure from the characters in SHTR, and it seemed to give Tom much more scope in terms of what they may have experienced in their lives and pasts which gave them a bit more depth and made them seem knowledgeable if that makes sense?!

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Tom Bale as the ability to put ordinary characters in extraordinary situations and still manages to keep the momentum going within the plot. All Fall Down is a whirlwind of a book, it will pick you up, spin you around and throw you back down to the ground with a bang!!!

#ALLTHESTARS for this one!!!

Rob and Wendy Turner are a middle aged couple with adult twin sons and an adopted teenage daughter. An idyllic backyard barbecue is interrupted by the arrival of a seriously wounded man, and this sets their life off in an unforeseen, dangerous direction.

What could be considered mild spoilers follows.

All Fall Down feels like a hodge-podge of various genres. It starts out as what seems like domestic noir, with not only Rob and Wendy hiding secrets, but also daughter Georgia and son Josh. Then, with the inclusion of characters such as Jason Dennehy and Johnny Nyman, it begins to resemble gangster-lite nonsense. (I'm emphatically NOT a fan of gangster material. I have no idea why there's so much of that element in the books I read. I don't find it interesting at all.) There's a bit of mystery as to who might be setting the family up. And then halfway through, it changes into a home invasion thriller, with some very mild torture porn thrown in.

Due to the constant tonal shifts, it took me some time to get into the book. The first half was, frankly, a bit dull. The home invasion portion is reasonably interesting and tense, but still feels like it's holding back. The material is very tame compared to, say, what Karin Slaughter or Richard Laymon might do with it. Also, the home invasion portion is rife with cliches, and ultimately doesn't deliver anything you haven't seen done elsewhere better. There's an underwhelming cap-off, ending things pretty much as you expected it to.

The characters are fine. I liked the protagonists and disliked the antagonists. There were a couple of interesting and intense moments. But the book definitely felt like it had an identity crisis, flitting between so many different crime sub-genres. And despite trying to have a finger in all those different pies, couldn't really deliver anything to make it stand out from the pack. I suspect the publishers didn't quite know what to do with the material, considering the strange title and a plot description that pushes the domestic noir angle.